ABSTRACT
J. B. Bury argued convincingly that the acts attributed to the Romani, were passed in Irish synods of the seventh century held in the interest of the Roman reform, though some of the canons were adopted from continental sources. The acts of the ‘Irish Synod’ which it quotes, acts which far outnumber those of the Romani, nowhere imply that they were drawn up for a church administered by diocesan bishops. The harmony of spirit between Irish canonists and the secular lawyers may be seen in the Senchas Mar. Irish law distinguishes eyewitness evidence from evidence as to character, and refuses to accept the eye-witness evidence of certain persons who may obviously be prejudiced, or of men degraded from holy orders, or of women. The adjustments made by the Christian church in the later sixth and seventh centuries to the Irish machinery of government had become the facts on which the eighth-century church must build.
